Make War, Not Love

Posted on Jan 14, 2011

Instead, an American lieutenant colonel choppers in to lecture village elders about the evils of “miscreants” in their midst and brags about his officers’ educational prowess and how it can benefit the Afghans. “They stare back unmoved,” writes Junger. “The Americans fly out of Yaka Chine, and valley elders meet among themselves to decide what to do. Five people are dead in Yaka Chine, along with ten wounded, and the elders declare jihad against every American in the valley.” Vignettes like this drive home the reasons why, after nearly a decade of overwhelming firepower, the U.S. war in Afghanistan has yet to prove “winnable,” despite the ministrations of Kilcullen and crew.

Later in the book we read about how Junger survives an improvised explosive device that detonates beneath his vehicle. He’s saved only by a jumpy trigger-man who touches two wires to a battery a bit too early to kill Junger and the other occupants of the Army Humvee he’s riding in. In response, Junger writes: “[T]his man wanted to negate everything I’d ever done in my life or might ever do. It felt malicious and personal in a way that combat didn’t. Combat gives you the chance to react well and survive; bombs don’t allow for anything.”

Junger, at least, traveled across the world to consciously and deliberately put himself in harm’s way. Imagine how the poor people of Yaka Chine must have felt when a $300 million American aircraft swooped in to drop a bomb on them in the dead of night. Junger’s book helps reveal these facts far better than his movie.

Getting a Read on War

Surveying this year’s Afghan War literature from popular best-sellers to little noticed Army monographs is generally disheartening but illuminating. “The moral basis of the war doesn’t interest soldiers much,” writes Junger near the beginning of his book. “[T]hey generally leave the big picture to others.”

America’s fighting men at the front are not alone. Most Americans have similarly chosen to ignore the “moral basis” for the war and the big picture as well. They have been aided and abetted in this not only by a president evidently bent on escalating the conflict at every turn, but also by a coterie of authors—many of them connected to the Pentagon—content to critique only doctrine, strategy, and tactics. Each of them is eager to push for his favorite flavor of warfare, but loath to address weightier issues. Perhaps this is one reason why Junger’s front-line troops—if they are indeed sampling the best the military’s prescribed reading lists have to offer—have a tendency to ignore fundamental issues and skip intellectual and moral inquiry.

The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan

By Nick Turse

Verso, 208 pages

If Pentagon-consultant-turned-potential-defense-contractor Kilcullen and the Joint Special Operations University’s author corps aren’t going to address morals and “big picture” issues, then the Sebastian Jungers of the world need to step up and cover the real, everyday face of war: the plight of civilians in the conflict zone. They also should focus on big-picture issues like whether the United States actually has anything approaching a true strategic vision when it comes to its wars and occupations abroad, whether there truly is a global Islamist insurgency as Kilcullen maintains, whether it could ever coalesce into a worldwide threat, and whether whatever it is that exists should be attacked with the force of arms. They need to offer more help in launching serious mainstream debate about America’s permanent state of war and its fallout.

The U.S. military’s reading lists are, not surprisingly, dedicated to combat and counterinsurgency. So are its favorite authors. To them, combat is war. Civilians in war zones know better. They know that war is suffering, because they live with it, not a tour at a time but constantly, day after day, week after week, year after year. Civilians outside war zones should know, too. It would be helpful if they had authors with the skill, intellect, and courage to help them to understand the truth.

Editor’s note: Below is an update that Nick Turse provided to Truthdig this week for publication with his TomDispatch review.

Last month, the U.S. Army War College issued the latest in its annual “Suggested Military Reading List” series. In the new list you’ll find plenty of the usual suspects, including David Kilcullen’s The Accidental Guerrilla (2009) and Counterinsurgency (2010) as well as Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields, a tract published by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute and authored by two of its resident scholars, Thomas Donnelly, the former deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century, and Frederick W. Kagan, who has served as an adviser to Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.

You will, however, also notice that Sebastian Junger’s War and, even more important, retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich’s two most recent works have also made the list. In 2008’s The Limits of Power, Bacevich draws on the work of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and writes “America doesn’t need a bigger army. It needs a smaller—that is, more modest—foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise.” Not exactly the norm when it comes to Pentagon reads. In 2010’s Washington Rules, he offers the most succinct and astute analysis available of exactly what “propelled the United States into a condition approximating perpetual war.”

Does the addition of books by Bacevich indicate that military reading lists are ready to head in a new direction? We’ll have a pretty good indication of the path if next year’s recommendations include works by Ann Jones, author of the powerful look at war’s terrible effects on women, War Is Not Over When It’s Over (2010), and her modern classic Kabul in Winter (2007), and the late Chalmers Johnson, whose 2010 book, Dismantling the Empire, lays out the dire costs of the Pentagon’s endless spending and endless wars—or if there’s a return to the more standard fare of the Pentagon book club.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book is “The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan” (Verso Books). Turse is currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute, and his website is NickTurse.com.

When professionals such as Dr. Laura use the terms “paranoia” or “marginal personality,” the words have genuine meaning to other professionals. However, persons qualified do not use such terms very much in blogs or speeches. And when they do use them, they are circumspectly employed.

It interested me, that about a year after “Psychology Today” hit the streets, all psychology sophomores had become psychologists. The discrepency was swiftly seized upon by political propagandists. Now, terms that were once used in mental-health-professional settings, have become the parlance of street-talk, and propagandists.

Spotting propaganda requires the application of only a couple of rules.

“I’d like to see a book written that explicitly draws the parallels, that shows how we have repeated virtually every mistake and misconception of the Vietnam War”
_____________

America’s aggressor war waged against the people of Southeast Asia unofficially began during the preliminary planning phase of the Truman administration, with the general deployment of the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) to Indochina. Eisenhower reorganized MAAG into target specific units (picture sniper scope crosshairs on a map). Kennedy created the Special Forces to be deployed there for assassinations targeting nation loyal village leaders and as educators in torture and repression for locals willing to collaborate. Johnson escalated to ramp up the profits. Nixon de-escalated to cut the losses. It was all just business. None of it was about “mistakes” made. All of it was a crime.

The Long War OF Terror for remnants of fossil fuels unofficially began during the planning phase of the Carter administration. Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton, GW Bush, and Obama have not been making “mistakes” in their serial wars against the people considered expendable for oil & gas. they have all been committing the highest of international crimes: aggressor war.

It’s also no “mistake” that there’s never an international court, with a hangman around, when a POTUS commits mass-murder for industrial profits.

The thing that strikes me about the Forever Wars in the Middle East is the amnesia of official Washington, as if the Vietnam War never happened. Well, that’s not quite true, the Pentagon has learned how to control the media.

I’d like to see a book written that explicitly draws the parallels, that shows how we have repeated virtually every mistake and misconception of the Vietnam War on an item by item basis. Currently President Obama is acting the role of Richard Nixon, pretending he has an exit strategy when he has no clue what to do except escalate.

Anyone who wants to read a good, anti-war book about modern Afghanistan
should check out Sarah Chayes’s “The Punishment Of Virtue.” Ms. Chayes is an
unaffiliated aid worker, and her book describes ground-level reform efforts that
are inevitably doomed by military mission creep and the corruption of the Karzai
government. It’s a good history lesson and a touchingly sad human story, with
some great moments of humor in it. Well worth getting from your local library.

Sebastion Junger’s book “War” is an example of the junior high school level of the aggrandizement of war that is being written nowadays.

Written by professional, pampered, young journalists who ‘went to the finest schools all right but only used to get juiced in it.’

This war is coming home. And not only in the respect that one imagines as in body bags and wounded soldiers and marines.

For example, Vietnam gave us Special Forces soldiers trained in counter-insurgency like Ward Churchill and, most recently, J. Eric Fuller or James Eric Fuller.

Fuller says he was wounded in Tucson. They showed pictures of a knee with stitches, but they never showed the knee connected to him.

He’s a 63-year old vet and he appeared on Aimee Goodman’s DemocracyNow!. He said that he went to the Loughner residence a day or two after the shooting to tell the Loughners he forgave their son.

Today, he was on TV, the Amanpour, Dilly-Dally Hour, and he threatened one of the persons in the audience who supported gun rights. He said, “You’re dead.”

They said that Fuller was arrested and taken into custody where he’ll have his head examined later this week.

Look up ‘Gladio’.

Churchill was a Special Forces soldier and an SDS infiltrator. He taught those two hapless SDSers in NY in the 60s how to build a bomb. When they tried on their own, they blew themselves up.

Churchill surfaced a few years ago as an ersatz professor of Native American culture at the U of Colorado. When they found that he had plagiarized, they forced him out.

Churchill carried a Magnum 45 revolver, I believe.

These the are members of the home grown mutation of Galdio.

You’ll probably be hearing from J. Eric Fuller or James Eric Fuller, Jim Fuller in the future.

Telltale signs

The language these people use gives them away. Fuller said on DemocracyNow! that Jesse Kelly, the ex-Marine, who ran against Giffords was a ‘marginal personality.’ Where have you heard talk like that before and who uses those types of ad hominem attcks?

Mr. Cyr your latest post in response to my comment regarding the legitimacy of elections has taken me from puzzled to confused.
____________

The clearly evident fact that elections aren’t used for their alleged purpose doesn’t mean they don’t have a purpose, for which accurate counts are useful.

A master magician can correctly pick the one card he’s “pushed” upon near anyone who volunteers from his audience. A trick is involved, but the cards are real, and a master magician doesn’t need the cards to be marked or number manipulated in any way. The trick works because the magician is capable of getting nearly anyone who volunteers to assist him to pick whatever card the magician has pre-selected to be chosen.

The elections illusion is in the appearance of people deciding what will be done, which they don’t. It doesn’t matter which “electable” receives the majority of the popular vote because both “electables” have been corporate person pre-selected as acceptable to be corporate state policy continuum providers.

The corporate state can alter counts (the “statistics”) at will, but it rarely needs to. The votes that actually matter are all cast before the election; cast in very large dollar denominations. The “contributions” of corporate persons routinely succeed in deciding which “electable” the sheeple will choose, with no magic or vote count manipulation required. If the sheeple by a narrow margin choose the “electable” less preferred by the corporate persons, then the “electable” not pre-selected to be the chosen one concedes. If there’s any naive natural persons’ interference delaying the concession, then the Judicial Branch can be absolutely relied upon to choose the corporate persons’ choice.

Election fraud, with regard to count, is something that local zealots do, because there is a real competition between the corporate party’s factions. The liberal and conservative factions of the corporate party do fiercely compete for the privilege of managing the corporate state’s crimes; and both are certain that they can commit the crimes better than the other. The conservatives believe any evil should be quickly done. The liberals believe that great care should be taken to have every evil well done.

The only vote count that really matters is the dissident vote — the resistance vote.

Why? Permanent government.

Robert Gates has managed the foreign war policy in both the past “nasty” Bush Administration and the current “nice” Obama administration.

Goldman-Sachs has managed the domestic war policy ever since Clinton lied about everything.

Two thirds of eligible voters don’t even bother to vote believing our government is corrupt. American people generally support wars believing we are making progress or winning. Authors of these pro-war books simply make the case for military progress or winning. The American people continue to buy into the lies and propaganda.

Even John Krakauer’s recent book about Pat Tillman proved to be a huge disappointment. What I learned about Tillman’s tragic friendly-fire killing was worse than I imagined. Tillman it seems had a chance- due to his celebrity - to be released from his commitment after his first tour-which was in Iraq in 2003- but he elected to go back to Afghanistan.Tillman was so caught up in the mystique of the honor and glory of soldiering, that he forgot what a huge lie that the War on Terror was.

Certainly seems that the huge influx of pro-war literature
indicates the u.s. military will add to and keep ‘pounding away’
at the reinvigorated ‘sustainable wars’ that keep the mic so
happy. In fact it’s connotative that the u.s. mic is an entity unto
its own, a state within a state or the true rulers of a nation.

Why else would a propaganda campaign of publishing more pro
war books be of importance unless it was to drown out the anti
war literature.

Wow, Mr. Cyr your latest post in response to my comment regarding the legitimacy of elections has taken me from puzzled to confused.

As I understand it, you AGREE with me that elections are fraudulent; but then you go on to say that voting statistics indicate the public mood, motivation, morals, and ethics.

Logically, you CAN’T have it BOTH ways:

—IF the elections are fraudulent, then it follows the statistics MUST be as well…

OR

—IF the statistics are valid, then it follows the elections CANNOT be fraudulent.

In primitive societies members burn offerings on altars and expect to curry favors.

In even more primitive societies members press buttons or place marks on pieces of paper and place them in boxes and expect to curry favors.

And political party members think they are more advanced than illiterate savages???

What a laugh!

Obviously, they still believe in miracles, witch doctors and magic or they would NOT waste their time politicking and voting.

Wake UP—All politicians are liars, thieves and murderers—HOW do you think they got to the top of the cesspool?? Nice, honest, ethical people do NOT obtain political office anymore than ethical God-fearing people become Mafia contract killers. The very nature of the system automatically filters out anyone who has ethics and has not been compromised.

If voting could REALLY change things it would be illegal. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are going to “change things”—both are corrupt sociopathic psychotics addicted to power and privilege; just like their “opponents”. Only fools believe otherwise.

In a curious sort of way, George Bush is the most honest president the USA has ever had because he stated the truth when he said, “The Constitution is just a `goddam’ piece of paper”. All other presidents believed that too; but they were too hypocritical to admit it and you were too deluded to detect it.

Constitutions, elections, voting, politicians, etc. are just SHOW BUSINESS designed to distract you and divert you from taking measures that would REALLY change things. But, I guess they no longer teach history and most are illiterate and believe in Harry Potter magic tricks and other miracles.

What a shame,—but perhaps someday a REALLY intelligent species will occupy the earth after HomoPoliticoStupidus is extinct—shouldn’t be much longer…

“I am ALWAYS amazed that people who believe the government lies about everything can somehow believe that elections are honest.”
____________

Corporate state elections are an illusion, but they do usefully reveal which few of us — among We The People speaking — are honest.

American elections offer an opportunity for natural persons to provide popular mandate approvals for the corporate state crimes that corporate person’s have decided will be done. The people who are free-willing to be complicit in corporate crimes are allowed to indicate their (R) or (D) preference for how they wish those crimes to be committed by the “electable” candidates; either hot-bloodedly by Republicans, or cold-bloodedly by Democrats.

Elections results reveal that 99% of those who vote choose to be willing accomplices in the crimes of the corporate state. Unfortunately, elections don’t indicate why those who haven’t voted didn’t vote. How many didn’t vote because they consciously and conscientiously refused to be complicit? That information isn’t available.

However, the more important function of elections is that they serve as a barometer for the corporate state to frequently measure the actual real level of societal dissidence. No other polls matter. And it doesn’t matter how many or how large street demonstrations are, if the demonstrators later dutifully support the corporate party’s candidates.

The corporate state carefully watches its dissidence barometer (election results), because it knows that action to moderate itself, by providing some small relatively insignificant improvement in conditions to reduce dissidence, is only required if there is significant voter support for real political alternatives to the one corporate party only system. Any small rise of just a few percent in support of any true opposition is significant to the corporate state. It’s something considered a serious threat. It’s something that demands that attention to people’s demands must then be more seriously paid. The greater the support for unelectable alternatives opposing the interchangeable part “electable” candidates that the corporate state installs, the greater the small crumbs it needs to then supply. But, if there is no alternative party, if there’s no disloyal opposition organization significantly supported by voters, then there’s no need for the corporate state to moderate the already adequately self-moderated masses.

Elections could have been a useful tool for insurgency in America, but so far they’ve only served to prove how dishonest Democrats are.

The american population is more or less interested in what is happening in Afghanistan as compared to Viet Nam because this a war is fought by personnel who volonteered to be in the armed forces.
The threat of being drafted and sent to the battlefield stimulates the imagination and the will of the young and their parents to take actions to let the governement know that they are not willing to go out and get maimed or killed for reasons they do not understand.
I do not think that the government would have been able to convince the population in the first place if he had decided for the draft.

The author notes the literary difference between Vietnam and Afghan wars—the difference is largely economic in that the Military did not have the unlimited budget to shape the literary marketplace then as it does now.

The old adage, “The power to tax is the power to destroy” has an often overlooked corollary, “The power to spend is the the power to employ”—read that as shape the market.

Is it Pakistan now the the head of the Mossad has admitted in his retirement that Iran was never closer than 5 years from making a nuclear weapon?

The parplegic psychiatrist, Dr Charles Krauthammer, the Dr. Strangelove of the right wing has introduced the story that the Mossad and the CIA put a virus in Iran’s computers and that was a “monkey wrench in the works.”

So, who do they turn to when nobody loves them? Pakistan, of course. Scary, scary Pakistanis.

After all, they all look alike, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, swarthy, dark. What’s the diff?

So it’s off to nuclear war we’ll go where everyone will have to really sacrifice.

Killing people is a mental and spiritual disease. Individuals who kill people one by one are mentally and spiritually sick. Nations that kill people by the thousands are mentally and spiritually sick. People who permit their government to kill people, one by one or by the thousands are evading the first and last human healing responsibility—Do No Harm!